{"title":"Digital privacy is a sexual health necessity: a community-engaged qualitative study of virtual sex work and digital autonomy in Senegal.","authors":"Juliana Friend","doi":"10.1080/26410397.2023.2272741","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the harm reduction potential of virtual sex work (VSW) such as video or audio calls with clients. VSW limits exposure to COVID-19 and STIs. However, sex workers using digital technologies face high risks of technology-facilitated intimate partner violence (IPV), such as non-consensual distribution of intimate images. This study explored perceived risks and benefits of VSW, including the salience of STI harm reduction. Ethnographic interviews and participant observation with self-identified cis women sex workers in Dakar between January 2018 and August 2019 informed a further period of focused data collection in June 2022, in which two key research participants and the author devised a goal of concrete community benefit: a list of contextually relevant digital privacy precautions and resources. Brainstorming this list during workshops with 18 sex workers provided prompts for participant perspectives. While participants generally preferred VSW, citing STI prevention as a key reason, most resumed in-person sex work after COVID-19 curfews lifted; social risks of digital privacy breach and potential outing outweighed physical risks of contracting STIs. Participants proposed privacy features for mobile applications to make VSW viable and benefit from STI prevention. Their reflections call on tech companies to embed values of informed consent and privacy into platform design, shifting the burden of protecting privacy from individuals to companies. This study addresses a gap in technology-facilitated IPV research, which has concentrated on Euro-American contexts. Participant perspectives can inform action in technology policy sectors to advance criminalised communities' rights to sexual health, privacy, and autonomy.</p>","PeriodicalId":37074,"journal":{"name":"Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.3000,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11001352/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/26410397.2023.2272741","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2023/11/20 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"PUBLIC, ENVIRONMENTAL & OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the harm reduction potential of virtual sex work (VSW) such as video or audio calls with clients. VSW limits exposure to COVID-19 and STIs. However, sex workers using digital technologies face high risks of technology-facilitated intimate partner violence (IPV), such as non-consensual distribution of intimate images. This study explored perceived risks and benefits of VSW, including the salience of STI harm reduction. Ethnographic interviews and participant observation with self-identified cis women sex workers in Dakar between January 2018 and August 2019 informed a further period of focused data collection in June 2022, in which two key research participants and the author devised a goal of concrete community benefit: a list of contextually relevant digital privacy precautions and resources. Brainstorming this list during workshops with 18 sex workers provided prompts for participant perspectives. While participants generally preferred VSW, citing STI prevention as a key reason, most resumed in-person sex work after COVID-19 curfews lifted; social risks of digital privacy breach and potential outing outweighed physical risks of contracting STIs. Participants proposed privacy features for mobile applications to make VSW viable and benefit from STI prevention. Their reflections call on tech companies to embed values of informed consent and privacy into platform design, shifting the burden of protecting privacy from individuals to companies. This study addresses a gap in technology-facilitated IPV research, which has concentrated on Euro-American contexts. Participant perspectives can inform action in technology policy sectors to advance criminalised communities' rights to sexual health, privacy, and autonomy.
期刊介绍：
SRHM is a multidisciplinary journal, welcoming submissions from a wide range of disciplines, including the social sciences and humanities, behavioural science, public health, human rights and law. The journal welcomes a range of methodological approaches, including qualitative and quantitative analyses such as policy analysis; mixed methods approaches to public health and health systems research; economic, political and historical analysis; and epidemiological work with a focus on SRHR. Key topics addressed in SRHM include (but are not limited to) abortion, family planning, contraception, female genital mutilation, HIV and other STIs, human papillomavirus (HPV), maternal health, SRHR in humanitarian settings, gender-based and other forms of interpersonal violence, young people, gender, sexuality, sexual rights and sexual pleasure.
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